


how to hate the word "love"

by haikyuuni



Series: sakuatsu angst week 2021 [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Crushes, M/M, Movie Night, Pining, Post-Wedding, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:54:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29985927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haikyuuni/pseuds/haikyuuni
Summary: “i love you,” atsumu would say to him. to him! sakusa kiyoomi!and he would only respond with a glare. ‘ungrateful,’ the sakusa now would’ve told him. imagine being told everyday that you were loved, only to respond like that.orhearing atsumu say "i love you" everyday, was something sakusa took for granted.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: sakuatsu angst week 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194689
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43
Collections: SakuAtsuAngstWeek





	how to hate the word "love"

**Author's Note:**

> prompt - unrequited love

“i love you,” atsumu would say to him.  _ to him!  _ sakusa kiyoomi! 

and he would only respond with a glare. ‘ungrateful,’ the sakusa now would’ve told him. imagine being told everyday that you were loved, only to respond like that. however, still staying on the same spectrum, sakusa had slowly started noticing little things about atsumu he wouldn’t usually. 

he would notice things like how;

_ atsumu always told him he loved him after he ate something. _

_ atsumu plays with his hands a lot.  _

_ he’s never seen atsumu genuinely sad before.  _

_ atsumu adds a ‘-kun’ to everyone’s name.  _

_ atsumu lifts his arms a lot, but does not smell bad. _ (interesting, kiyoomi.)

and the most recent;

_ atsumu has been awfully close with hinata recently. _

so much that atsumu has missed a day telling sakusa that he loved him. of course, sakusa carried the day on long normal (he didn’t), practicing silently and heading home normally. behind him he caught glimpses of his teammates conversation, but didn’t care, as per usual. 

“why does sakusa-kun look more grumpy today?”

“that’s what i thought! he was practicing well, but he didn’t seem to be in a good mood.”

“really? i didn’t notice at all.”

that voice struck him.  _ atsumu miya  _ had said he didn’t notice. that he didn’t notice at all. was sakusa just not important to him anymore? sakusa paused in his step, debating whether he should turn around or not, but decided to just keep going. who was he to care anyway?

the next morning, sakusa wakes up to a text from atsumu saying,  **i’m sorry omi-kun! i forgot to tell you that i loved you today! and i can’t fall asleep forgetting something so important! i love you :)**

sakusa feels the ends of his lips quirk up into a small smile. “what a dork,” he says out loud. satisfied, he tosses the phone to the side, going back to sleep, unknowing leaving the blond on read. 

on the other end, atsumu watched the  _ delivered  _ turn into  _ read _ , then sighed. what was he expecting? sakusa to say it back? as if. 

“what’s wrong?”

atsumu looked up in surprise, forgetting that hinata was also in the room with him. “oh, it’s just you.”

atsumu looks down, ruffling his hair a bit, “kiyoomi-kun left me on read.”

“sakusa-san again?” hinata thinks for a moment, handing atsumu a plate of breakfast. “he’s a tricky one.”

“he really is.” 

atsumu ate lunch with hinata that day, leaving sakusa in the empty cafeteria. atsumu seems to avoid sakusa for a couple days, before returning the regular lunch routine to say “i love you”. like usual. 

sakusa has to bite his lip to prevent him from saying it back. he mutters out a small, “thank you,” while the inside of his body fills with warmth. 

_ positive vibrations  _ he read somewhere. he even saw an angel number that day. 

atsumu blinks twice at him, before breaking out into a large smile, one full of teeth. “of course!” he says, before getting up to get seconds. 

“you’re hungry today.”

“not hungry, just happy,” he offers sakusa a celery stick. “there’s nothing wrong with that.”

\--

“let’s hang out today,” atsumu says out of the blue. they were staying behind, practicing on some setter/spiker combinations. 

“are we not already hanging out?” sakusa says, although not opposed to the idea.

“not really,” atsumu hesitates. “this is like, work stuff.”

“work stuff?” sakusa raises a brow.

“yeah.”

sakusa sighs, “where do you want to go then?”

sakusa watches atsumu’s eyes light up, mouth widening into that smile that just makes sakusa’s face feel hotter than ever. atsumu opens his mouth to say something, but quickly closes it, turning away. “wait, i didn’t get that far yet.”

sakusa surprises himself, feeling the bubbling chuckle arise. he almost laughs, almost. he covers his little sputter with a cough. atsumu decides on going to the movie theatre just two blocks away from their training building. 

that one hangout leads to a movie night every two months, to monthly movie nights, to weekly movie nights. every week on friday, they would go to the same theatre, order the same snack, and watch a movie. it’s so frequent at this point that the ticket office workers are familiar with them. sakusa thinks he’s never been more stress free. 

one friday, he wakes up with a raring headache. on his bedside table lays his phone, uncharged, by the way, with a single notification from atsumu.

**i can’t make it to the weekly movie thing tonight shoyo-kun asked me to go with him this week**

sakusa frowns. he starts typing,  **wasn’t that our thing?** but he quickly deletes it. he couldn’t write that. how selfish of him, to keep the blond to only of himself on fridays. he wonders a while what to type, before deciding on just an  **ok, see you next week then.**

the next week comes and still, atsumu has plans with hinata. the weekly movies soon became atsumu and hinata’s thing, and sakusa now practicing alone on friday afternoons. atsumu still eats lunch with sakusa, like always, but sakusa feels like it keeps getting too quiet. and too quickly. the talking was replaced with atsumu’s keyboard clicking, him typing quickly in response to the ginger spiker. and right after saying “i love you”, those three words, atsumu would pack up to leave. and soon, that became the new routine.

sakusa wonders if atsumu really wanted to eat lunch with him. funny how earlier that year, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. 

where was he going? was a constant thought for the curly haired male, but he didn’t say anything. he wished he did though. 

\--

atsumu stopped eating lunch with sakusa now, running off somewhere else. sakusa sighed, sitting in the empty cafeteria, once more. it wasn’t  _ really  _ empty, but it sure felt like it did. no one to ramble his ear off, no one to just simply listen to. 

sakusa barely ever saw atsumu outside of practice anymore. he saw atsumu once while he was locking up, prepared to take this chance to go talk to him, but when he saw hinata pop up next to the blond, sakusa pursed his lips and walked away. 

each time sakusa tries to talk privately with atsumu, hinata was there. and so he simply backed away, leaving the two to themselves. 

did he perhaps grow to hate hinata? “as if,” is what he’d like to say, but he doesn’t truly know. all he does know is that the annoyance that comes with the red head, is always pushed underneath the desire to keep the team strong and stable. 

sakusa thinks about these events on late night on a friday, where atsumu was probably watching a movie with hinata. atsumu didn’t say “i love you” anymore, none of that. they barely even talked anymore. 

he decides to send him a text,  **let’s eat lucnh tgt** pressing send and then falling asleep. he wakes up, regretting that text message. 

however, sakusa and atsumu did eat lunch together that day. after they finished eating though, sakusa expected to hear the familiar “i love you” but it never came. instead, atsumu was holding his phone, texting with a wide smile on his face. 

sakusa frowns, just slightly. “i love you,” sakusa says, he doesn’t know why. maybe it was to fill in for the amount of times atsumu had missed it, although by now, it was probably too many to count. 

“pardon?” atsumu stared at the other male, mouth open, eyes not blinking. 

sakusa debates whether he should repeat what he said. “...i love you?”

“oh, that?” atsumu chuckles. “love you too, omi-kun!”

“that’s not what i mean,” sakusa feels in his throat, but it doesn’t come out. sakusa just nods, swallowing his words. 

“i’ve been waiting for you to say that!”

the conversation falls silent again, and soon, atsumu starts packing up. “see ya, omi-kun!  _ shoyo’s  _ waiting for me, hope we can eat lunch again sometime!” 

sakusa nodded and waved, watching atsumu rush towards the door. atsumu didn’t even do anything, but sakusa got the point. 

atsumu didn’t love sakusa the way sakusa loved him. 

and to be frank, atsumu probably did. atsumu probably did love him. and all sakusa did was ignore him and throw those feelings of his aside. 

now all sakusa can do is watch atsumu and hinata slowly fall more and more in love with each other. he watches them start dating, he watches them get engaged. and lastly, there sakusa is standing next to atsumu, as his best man, at their wedding.

after the wedding reception, sakusa heads home. as he sits on his bed, phone lying unplugged at the table, he sighs. “i never want to hear  _ i love you  _ again in my life.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
